


Coming Undone

by Stariceling



Category: Prince of Stride: Alternative (Anime)
Genre: M/M, No happy end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 20:13:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15299160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: When the distance between them grows, none of them knows how to reach out and connect the way they used to.





	1. Kuga Kyousuke: Unraveling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this was the tic-tac-toe round I have prompts for three short chapters. Each takes the form of a quote.
> 
> Prompt:  
> “It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I’d known, maybe I’d have kept tighter hold of them, and not let unseen tides pull us apart.”
> 
> ― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Kyousuke felt like he was the connection between Heath and Tomoe every time they ran together. Every time Heath reached out to him it went through him like a spark. He treasured the spark Heath gave him and he passed it to Tomoe along with his own feelings. Sometimes he wanted to keep running with Tomoe and sometimes he wanted to turn and run back to Heath to complete the circuit right away, but mostly he watched Tomoe run with his palm tingling and his heart racing.

Sometimes the connection was slower and longer, holding each of their hands in his. Heath’s fingers laced warm between his and he rubbed his thumb over Kyousuke’s. Tomoe was always somewhat abrupt, gripping his hand hard and then suddenly gone as if he’d stayed until the last possible second.

Kyousuke defines love as reaching out and making a connection. Love was the feeling when their hands touched, even if just for an instant.

He can count up the number of times their hands and hearts connected, because it ended. There was no goodbye. There is only a sudden distance, as if the earth has cracked open between them. Tomoe is leaving and Heath is off limits.

There is nowhere to send his feelings anymore. They weigh him down and drag him to a halt. They pool heavy in his palms, because he knows where love wants to go but he can’t reach.

Kyousuke runs and runs and pushes himself alone. He remembers how Tomoe couldn’t think of anything but running once he started, but he can’t seem to get swept up in it to forget he has nothing to run to anymore.

Tomoe never asks how things are going. He only asks Kyousuke to leave Honan and join him. “You could be a regular,” Tomoe tells him. Tomoe, who couldn’t flatter someone to save his life, thinks there is a place for him.

Kyousuke tells Heath about the offer. If he could have a place, then surely Heath could as well now that he’s healed.

The expression that greets this news is nothing like what he expected and he doesn’t know what to think.

“He made that offer to you, not me.”

“Because you don’t want to leave Honan.”

Heath laughs and looks away. “I don’t think he realizes that. If he wants to contact me, I’m sure he’ll do it, not force you to carry messages.”

No one is forcing Kyousuke. He selfishly wants this. If they can’t be close right now, then the least he can do is carry their emotions across the gap. It’s hard to believe Tomoe doesn’t realize that his feelings will be carried to where they belong.

Kyousuke hates the feeling of the two of them spinning farther and farther away from him, all the little threads between them coming undone, but what hurts more is watching them falling farther and farther away from each other. If the space between them grows too wide for him to cross, then how will they connect?

Tomoe is silent when Kyousuke asks if he has Heath’s number. They both know he shouldn’t need it as long as he has Kyousuke. Kyousuke sends it anyway, to make sure. He tells himself he loves them so much he has to let them connect without him.

When they talk to each other (and he would like to believe they do talk to each other), Kyousuke is not in the loop. He is no longer the conduit between them. He will have to learn to live outside of that connection.


	2. Yagami Tomoe: Never the Same Love Twice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
> “There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.”
> 
> ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

The ten seconds that separate them at the end of the time trial might as well be eternity. It’s enough time for it to finally occur to Tomoe that Kyousuke has always turned him down for a reason. Kyousuke has a destination. Tomoe only wants to run and keep running forever and Kyousuke knows that. He doesn’t want to run alongside Tomoe.

Suddenly seeing the distance between them is like hitting the end of the takeover zone and realizing there was never another person reaching for him. He can’t bring himself to push his way into someone’s life uninvited but he still wants to connect. That’s why he loves Stride even more than he loves running.

There is nothing that hurts quite like parting from someone he loves. His choice or theirs, it’s all the same hurt. As soon as Tomoe is left to his own devices he only wants to run, even if it no longer connects him to the people he loves. He’s almost grateful he doesn’t feel the same way about his new team.

He’s pretty sure it’s his fault he can’t connect anymore but after what was said he’s afraid to ask. Riku said _there’s something wrong with you_ and Heath said _you don’t need us_ and Kyousuke didn’t say anything, which was the most terrifying of all.

He thought he lost Heath much sooner, because Heath said _never_ and Kyousuke said _I can’t_ and he thought there was a difference. Now he wonders if he lost them both a long time ago, if he was an idiot for thinking he could still reach Kyousuke, even if it’s just by his fingertips. Maybe he’s an idiot for thinking he could ever reach Kyousuke at all.

Tomoe was wrong when he thought Kyousuke was someone he could always connect with. He had thought there was something special when Kyousuke was the one to touch his hand and set him free, and he doesn’t believe anyone else will ever feel the same.

Whatever they had then, he can’t touch it again.

Maybe his perception has been off for a long time where Kyousuke is concerned. They’ve been pulling apart at least since the aftermath of Heath’s injury. At least since the day he went to clean his things out of the club room and found Kyousuke standing outside.

Kyousuke had been so calm and cool through the whole thing Tomoe was starting to find it disturbing. Tomoe never understood how he could bow his head down to accept all the blame and lie and lie and lie until when he broke down and spilled the truth into Tomoe’s ear it sounded strange.

He wasn’t calm when Tomoe found him. His hands were clenched and shaking. His head tilted back, eyes open and empty.

It would occur to Tomoe much later that Heath’s voice was audible through the open door, though he never noted the words. All he thought of in the moment was to grab Kyousuke by the wrist and pull.

Tomoe, who would say he has never truly known what another person needed, thought in that moment that Kyousuke needed to not be there.

So he pulled Kyousuke outside, pulled him to run with the wind. Kyousuke’s breathing was far too ragged for their pace but it eventually evened out, so Tomoe thought maybe everything was okay.

When they eased out of the sprint and finally slowed to a walk, Kyousuke’s hand wrapped around his, and that was definitely okay.

“Come with me,” Tomoe said, not for the first or last time. He had to go somewhere where he could run as far and as fast as he could, or he was going to go crazy. There was no convincing Heath, and Tomoe would bow to the fact that dragging him here and there would keep him from healing, but Kyousuke couldn’t run here now. Couldn’t he at least take Kyousuke with him? They could still run together.

“I don’t think there’s any team that would want me now.”

Tomoe wanted to say who cared if Kyousuke punched an upperclassman? He wanted to say Kyousuke shouldn’t have lied. All he should need to do to prove himself was run, and there was no one else in the world who connected to Tomoe the way he did.

“You should go if you want to. We understand.”

Kyousuke’s hand slipped out of his. If he had known then he couldn’t have that connection back again, he never would have let go.


	3. Hasekura Heath: I thought that love would last forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:  
> “He was my North, my South, my East and West,  
> My working week and my Sunday rest,  
> My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;  
> I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”
> 
> ― W.H. Auden, Funeral Blues

Heath hears Tomoe’s version of Goodbye.

Afterward he watches Kyousuke walk around as if he didn’t just have someone he loves to death tell him what they had was never real. They know it’s not true and Tomoe has changed a lot if he thinks it is.

Heath remembers clearly how Kyousuke would orient himself towards Tomoe like a compass seeking north, how in every hour of his day there was time set aside for Tomoe to inhabit. Kyousuke loves more thoroughly than anyone Heath knows, taking people into his heart and never letting them go.

It wasn’t just Kyousuke building his world around Tomoe. When they were running Tomoe wouldn’t look back, couldn’t slow down, and blindly trusted them to catch him. When they were standing still, however, he constantly looked for Kyousuke. Heath could take a step back from them and see all the little glances, as if Tomoe needed to know that Kyousuke was still there.

Heath has never let himself be jealous of the way the two of them acted, like they might build a whole world out of each other. He still wants to punch Tomoe for forgetting it. The only reason he doesn’t is that he knows that wouldn’t change anything.

He says, “I heard your conversation,” to give Kyousuke space to talk about it, because he’ll never ask for that on his own.

“We connected,” Kyousuke says. He sounds perfectly calm. It’s a fact and he states it as a fact, not like he’s lacing the words together to cover a wound.

“You connected.”

“We connected,” Kyousuke repeats. There is a stress on ‘we’ this time. Not just himself and Tomoe.

Heath doesn’t know what to think. Tomoe was a good friend, the only man he could imagine sharing Kyousuke with, but between the two of them there was a space they never really crossed. Most of the time he didn’t even notice because Kyousuke was always there, keeping the bonds between the three of them unbroken.

Kyousuke has always been convinced that the connection between them is just as precious. He lets his love spill over and Heath won’t consider that a fault. It’s not that Tomoe wasn’t important to him, but what they had seems small. Tomoe’s affection was warm and honest and quiet, while Kyousuke’s love is deep and loyal. Somehow Heath imagines things must feel different between them. Kyousuke is more passionate, so Tomoe must give him more love. How could he help it?

Kyousuke says with perfect conviction, “He loves, loved, you.”

It feels strange talking about Tomoe in the past tense. They have been talking about him that way for a year, because he is so tied up in their shared past, but it seems different now.

It feels like they’re saying he’s really gone, like he’s never coming back.

Kyousuke’s hand grips his, much harder than he used to. It’s not just reaching for a connection, but refusing to let go.

It reminds him a little bit of the first time Tomoe kissed him. He had watched Heath through nearly closed eyes, gripping Heath’s hand like a lifeline. The soft touch of his lips was not quite timid, but much too careful.

They were first years then, so he had never thought much about how unsure Tomoe was. He knew Tomoe didn’t think about anything but running and maybe Kyousuke so if he wasn’t Tomoe’s first kiss it was only by one. When he put his free hand on Tomoe’s jaw and kissed him back, because Heath had bottomless confidence on his side, Tomoe let him.

Tomoe had said _thank you_ , and released Heath’s hand so abruptly that it ached from the missing pressure. Heath isn’t sure now why he didn’t kiss Tomoe again while he had the chance.

Maybe if he had reached out for Tomoe a little faster, or stretched a little further, the connection would have lasted. Maybe a little more would have been enough to build a world between the three of them, one they wouldn’t leave Kyousuke protecting on his own.


End file.
